"How fond women are of doing dangerous things! It is one of the qualities in them that I admire most. A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on."
"Our countrymen are more cunning than practical...They balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy."
"Of course married life is merely a habit, a bad habit.
But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality."
"It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them."
"She is clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. [She] has been through fire, and what fire does not destroy, it hardens. She has had experience."
"[She] was always trying to get herself compromised, but was so peculiarly plain that to her great disappointment, no one would ever believe anything against her."
"There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution."
--Oscar Wilde
